Dismissing the tomes, Mithris reached out and lifted Tempus from its velvet cradle. The timestone was perfectly spherical, smooth and cool to the touch. It was one moment completely dark, an impenetrable midnight hue; the next moment it shone brightly with colorless light and Mithris could see through the now-translucent stone a slightly distorted image of what lay behind it. Light and dark followed each other in a regular pattern.
“Hello,” Mithris said to the timestone.
He could hardly believe Eaganar had left it behind. Still holding Tempus in his hand, Mithris spun around. He eyed the shadowy room suspiciously. The timestone flared brightly in his grip, its progression of light and dark speeding up. Soon Tempus was flashing like a strobe, brighter and brighter.
Mithris squinted his eyes against the blinding flashes. The youthful wizard hunched his shoulders down in an unconscious posture of wariness. Eaganar had set a trap. Like a fool, Mithris had sprung it.
The shadows moved. Mithris opened his mouth, ready to deliver a cantrip. He hesitated. There was nothing in the room with him. And the shadows were retreating. What was going on?
Light spilled in through the window. Mithris whirled around, expecting attack. But it was only the rising sun. Mithris stared, uncomprehending. That window faced west.
The swollen red sun leaped over the far horizon, shooting up and across the sky. Mithris threw up a hand to shade his eyes, but the glare lasted only a moment. Light faded in the window and the shadows advanced again. Now it was dark. But then, the entire process repeated. The sun rose in the west, arced across the sky in a heartbeat, and sank in the east.
“Oh, no…” Mithris muttered. He thought he knew what was happening.
Tempus wants you to know how very sorry it is, Vapor told him.
Eaganar opened the door and walked backward into the room. Mithris sprang away from the table, ready to defend himself. But the evil wizard did not seem to notice him as he walked backward to the table. Mithris looked and saw Tempus lying in its velvet-lined box. He stared at the timestone in his hand as Eaganar lifted the stone and whispered an enchantment before returning it. Then the dark wizard left again.
The reverse flow of time sped even faster. Eaganar came and went many times, often moving so fast Mithris saw only a blur of dark robes and occasional flashes of magic. The sun rose and set in reverse, up and down again in the space of a heartbeat.
Beyond the window, the sun was a streak of light across the flickering sky. Days retreated, weeks slipped away, months trickled back. Eaganar was a near constant presence in the room, but he never noticed Mithris standing in the center of the room holding the foundation crystal tightly in one hand. And then Eaganar was gone, and the flow of time slowed. Tempus itself slowed, its strobing easing back to its original slow pulse.
Time resumed its normal flow, moving forward once more.
The tower shook violently, as though rocked by an earthquake. Masonry dust spilled from the cracks between stones, filling the air.
“Mithris! I told you to flee!”
Shivers ran up and down the young wizard’s spine. He turned round slowly. He knew what he would see, but even so his mouth fell open in shock.
“Deinre!” he cried.
His old master stood there, a trickle of blood running down one side of his face, his robes coated in dust. He held a stout birchwood casting wand in one hand, an open spellbook balanced in the other. As the tower shook under the assault, Master Deinre eyed his apprentice sternly.
“Master Deinre,” he said, ignoring another explosion from below. “I am still your master, boy, and I told you to run!”
Chapter 48
Mithris ran to the window and hurled a series of fireballs with a little help from Ember. The floor rattled beneath his feet and the tower groaned. He could see the grounds below swarming with denizens of the lower foundations, summoned forth by Eaganar to assault Deinre’s stronghold. Sneering, Mithris rained fire down on the creatures.
“Mithris, boy!” Deinre hurried up beside him, pulling Mithris back from the large window. The old wizard peered into his apprentice’s face, then took in the robes—and the four crystals adorning them. His eyes widened in shock.
Grinning sheepishly, Mithris held up Tempus. “I came from the future,” he said.
Deinre surprised Mithris by grabbing him up in an embrace. The five hundred year old wizard shook with emotion. Mithris found himself more than a little shaken as well by the time Deinre released him and stood back to look him over again.
A large, bat-like creature alighted at the window, folding its leathery wings and shrieking challenge. Deinre and Mithris reacted at once. Deinre cast a fireball; Mithris summoned a blast of air to knock the creature back and a lightning bolt to destroy it once it was away from the window. Deinre’s fireball incinerated the corpse.
Deinre looked at Mithris again with pride in his eyes.
“Five foundation crystals,” he marveled, shaking his head. “Simply amazing. But why have you come back?”
You can’t, warned Vapor. Mithris, you cannot save him.
“Why not?” the youth demanded.
Deinre arched one eyebrow, and then the old man paled and his jaw dropped open. “They speak to you?”
“Only the first one,” said Mithris, frowning. “The one you gave me.”
“Vapor.”
“That’s right.” Mithris shook his head. “It says I can’t save you.”
A pained expression fell over Deinre’s face. The old wizard nodded sadly. “So I’m to fall this day. I can’t say it surprises me, though it burns my heart to know that dog Eaganar will take my tower.”
Mithris set his jaw stubbornly. Turning back to the window, he gripped Vapor and Depths one in each hand and spoke a brief incantation. The sky beyond the window darkened. A howling wind sprang up. The clouds split open, releasing a torrential downpour. Jagged lightning bolts stabbed again and again at the creatures below. Mithris turned back to his master, again shaking his head.
“I don’t care what Vapor says,” he told Deinre. “Eaganar can’t stand against the pair of us, and I won’t leave you to face him alone. Not again.”
“Mithris, lad…” Deinre shook his head sadly. “Playing around with time itself is a dangerous business. Think what must happen if you interfere with the past. If you change this day, then all the days which follow are altered as well. You stand before me wielding five foundation crystals. But if I do not die today, as seems to be the case, you would hold none.”
Mithris considered that. He was not sure Deinre was right, but he could see the sense of what the old wizard said. But Mithris—the younger, terrified version of him—had already fled the tower. By now, he would be running blindly along that rocky shore.
But if Mithris—the wizard—stood with Deinre and defeated Eaganar now, then the dark wizard would never have gone after Mithris. He would not have hounded the lad across thousands of leagues, sending demons and mercenaries after him.
The youthful wizard hesitated. He began to realize how…mutable were the events which had led him here.
“This is his trap, then,” he said aloud. He had thought Eaganar meant to send him back to the midst of this battle to die. But that would have been foolish indeed, and Eaganar was anything but an idiot. No, the trap was far more subtle than that. Even so…
“I know where the crystals are,” he said, sending another fire-spell out the window with an off-hand cast. Deinre’s face set in stubborn lines, but the former apprentice persisted. “Listen to me, Deinre. I can tell you now where they are. When the battle is over, we’ll go collect my younger self. Or…you will. I suppose if Eaganar dies now, he can’t set a trap for me two years later can he? So I won’t be here…”
Deinre shook his head again. “We cannot know how events will fall out if you make such a change, Mithris. I’m sorry. You must leave me to my fate.”
So saying, the white-bearded old man lifted his arms and began an incantation which sound
ed familiar to Mithris. The younger wizard recognized the beginnings of a traveling spell. Yet this spell was more complex than any Mithris had seen before. He felt a magical pulling against the timestone in his hand, and realized what Deinre must intend.
“No,” he cried, and seized the thread of power Deinre was feeding through Tempus. The old man’s eyes widened in shock as Mithris hijacked his spell and twisted the energy to his own ends. Seizing control from his former master, Mithris pivoted in place and hurled the ruined spell out the window. A deafening crack of thunder sounded as the summoned energy dissipated into the storm without.
Master Deinre’s eyes narrowed. “I see you’ve studied my experiments,” he said, a touch of pride in his voice. “That is well, Mithris. I should hate to think my life’s work abandoned. But hear me, lad: you…must…go!”
Deinre hurled another spell at Mithris so quickly the former apprentice could barely react in time. Mithris seized at the power before it could resolve, again twisting it. But Deinre extended his hands, clutching at the empty air between them, and wrenched back control. Mithris staggered back, stunned. He had thought Deinre never succeeded at this!
“Oh yes,” said Deinre, seeing the younger man’s surprise. And then he wove his hands about in a complex gesture, intoning three solemn words as he did. Mithris felt the magic energy torn from his grasp, and a portal resolved.
“Go, my apprentice,” said Deinre. “Heed the advice of the foundation crystals. Seek out the final stone. You were the one they were waiting for, my boy.” Deinre grinned with tears in his eyes as he performed a final gesture with his hands.
Mithris felt himself pulled back, dragged through the time-portal by some irresistible force. He struggled in vain, flinging out his hands to reach for his former master. His eyes burned and his vision blurred as tears leaked down his cheeks.
“Deinre!” he cried just as he was yanked through the time-portal. The last he saw of his master was another of those leathery-winged creatures swooping in through the window, a gout of flame blasting from its mouth and enveloping Deinre. The centuries-old wizard threw up his arms and howled in agony as he was blasted to ashes, and then the time-portal closed and Mithris was once more alone.
Chapter 49
Mithris sank to his knees in the center of the shadowed chamber atop his dead master’s tower. Head in his hands, he wept.
We should go, urged Vapor.
“Leave me be,” Mithris snarled through his sobs.
Mithris, I share your grief. I was Deinre’s companion for more than three centuries. But we must go.
“You don’t understand,” argued Mithris. “I always thought that if Master Deinre had kept you, he could have prevailed against Eaganar. I’ve faced Eaganar myself, you know. He’s powerful, but not that powerful. Deinre could have defeated him. Now I know why he did not. It’s because I was there. I distracted him.”
Vapor was silent for a long moment. Mithris knew he was right.
Through his grief and new-found guilt, however, Mithris knew also that the foundation crystal was right as well. They needed to get out of here. Eaganar would know by now that his trap had failed. If Mithris had changed the past, the Now would have changed as well. Eaganar would be coming for him, then.
Wiping the bitter tears from his cheek, Mithris drew a shuddering breath and steadied himself. He spoke the words, opening a portal back to Avington. With a final glance around the darkened chamber where Deinre had once lived and worked, Mithris stepped through the portal and returned to Ileera’s abandoned tower far to the north.
***
Eaganar swept into his Arcanium, the uppermost chamber of the tower he’d seized from Deinre. The dark wizard’s face was a thunderhead of frustrated rage. His eyes raked over the room, noting the absence of Tempus from its case.
So the whelp had come and sprung the trap. And yet the course of events remained unchanged.
This Mithris continued to surprise and impress. Eaganar was big enough to admit that. But he would crush the upstart, of that he was certain. The boy had evaded this trap, but he would not be so fortunate a second time.
The loss of the timestone was a blow, certainly, but it had been the necessary bait in his trap. The risk had been calculated, the potential reward great. So the boy had slipped his grasp once more. Eaganar shrugged it off. He would recover Tempus when he recovered the other four.
Eaganar stroked his jet-black goatee and smiled to himself. Yes, he would recover the foundation crystals. The boy had been lucky so far, but that luck would only carry him so far. After the disastrous duel at Mount Wileth, Eaganar had vowed not to underestimate Deinre’s apprentice again.
“I know his next move,” the dark wizard mused, going to his scrying bowl and summoning up the same image he had studied every evening for a fortnight.
The fluid shivered in its basin, and as the rippling subsided the image cleared. Eaganar studied his target, chuckling to himself.
***
Ileera was dead, her modest four-storied tower in Avington deserted. Mithris did not know what had become of her many apprentices, and he did not particularly care.
The citizens of Avington gave the deserted tower a wide berth. Common folk mistrusted wizards at the best of times. After what had happened the first time he came to Avington, Mithris doubted anyone would approach Ileera’s tower for years.
True, the decisive moments of that duel had taken place hundreds of leagues away. He had battled Ileera in mid-air over a turbulent sea. That same deep ocean was Ileera’s grave. But the fight had started here, and the locals knew something had happened. When Ileera never returned, and her students abandoned their home, the people of Avington must have guessed some of what happened.
They would leave him alone, and that was all Mithris wanted.
Her tower is beginning to leave you alone as well, noted Vapor when Mithris entered the room which had been Ileera’s private study without incident.
The young wizard had appropriated the tower when he found it deserted upon returning to Avington after his duel with Eaganar. But a wizard’s tower was more than stone and mortar. Corridors had seemed to shift, rooms changing places. Solid stonework that had stood firm for a thousand years crumbled, dropping massive blocks of marble that nearly smashed him. Many other dangers presented themselves.
Lately, though, the tower seemed to have settled in to its new master.
You could stay here, suggested Vapor. Be this tower’s master in truth.
Mithris considered. But no, he thought. The memories he had of this place were unpleasant. He still shuddered when he thought of the fate which awaited Ileera’s most promising students. He would not stay here. For now, however, it made an acceptable base of operations. At least Eaganar had never thought to come looking for him here.
“After I’ve collected Absence, and defeated Eaganar for good,” said Mithris, “I will find a tower of my own. Probably I’ll build it myself.”
Only fitting, for such a powerful wizard.
Mithris paused at that. Powerful wizard. Was that what he was? He felt wretched; he felt weak. His master was dead because of him. What kind of powerful wizard was he, really?
There was nothing you could do, Mithris. Vapor’s tone was consoling. The foundation crystal worried about him. Mithris brushed that off.
“You keep saying that. It doesn’t change the fact that Deinre is dead.”
He was just as dead before you went back in time, Mithris.
“The only difference is that I didn’t know I’d killed him.”
You didn’t kill him. Eaganar did that.
That was true, but Mithris didn’t feel like taking any comfort from Vapor’s words just then. Shrugging uncomfortably, he went to the large, stone scrying bowl in the corner. “Let’s just find Absence,” he said. “Then we can get this over with.”
The voidstone is far to the south and west, Vapor advised him. It is a part of this world the rest of us have never visited. Perhaps an isla
nd.
Mithris nodded. With a low muttered incantation, he activated the scrying bowl. “How far?” he asked.
Ten thousand leagues or so.
Mithris whistled. That was far away indeed. He concentrated, holding the distance and direction in his mind as he cast his awareness wide. In the bowl before his eyes, an image formed of the trackless ocean.
The view skimmed rapidly over the choppy, white-capped waters. Soon an island hove into view, a rocky promontory jutting up from the turbulent sea. It was not a large chunk of land, no larger than Avington itself.
The rocky island was ringed by a narrow, white sand beach. Palm trees leaned and swayed. Thick jungle rose up from the edge of the beach. The ground rose higher the closer to the center, but all was covered by the impenetrable jungle. In the center of the island, shooting up from amidst the palms, rose a slender column of black stone.
A wizard’s tower. Mithris groaned. He should have known.
Here we go again, said Vapor, not without sympathy.
Chapter 50
What appeared to be a free-floating soap bubble formed in empty air over the hot white sand. The bubble grew and expanded and then filled in with the image of another place far, far away. The portal finished resolving, and Mithris stepped through onto the beach.
Tropical heat and humidity assailed him as he dismissed his portal. Sweat broke out on his forehead. A cooling breeze blew in over the crashing waves, rustling in the palm fronds, but it was not enough to counter the heat. Mithris shook his head. Who would live in such a climate?
“Only a madman,” the young wizard muttered to himself.
You think all wizards are mad, Vapor pointed out.
“They are.”
Mithris studied the thick, lush vegetation that grew nearby. He had examined the island through his scrying bowl, hunting for any clear path through that jungle to the black tower. He had found none. Well, that was no problem. He was a wizard, after all.
Taking Ember in his hand, Mithris uttered a fire-spell. Raising his other hand, palm facing the dense jungle, Mithris completed the incantation. A stream of ghostly fire burst from his palm, shooting out toward the thick vegetation.
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